A considerable amount of credit/blame for my love of small boats goes to L. Francis Herreshoff and his book ‘The Compleat Cruiser’. I fell in love with his ideas about a simple yet refined cruising lifestyle, epitomized by Mr. Weldon and his whaleboat type ketch - Rozinante. Rozinante is beautiful, fast, seaworthy and handy, and I was musing recently about how a proa version of Rozinante might work out.
Rozinante Il is a mono-proa - a…
A working hapa model has finally been accomplished by Frenchman Luc Armant. It is the realization of the theoretically perfect sailboat: an airfoil and hydrofoil, tied together by a single line in tension. The massless sailboat has long been the dream of sailing pioneers from Bernard Smith’s aerohydrofoil to D. Costes’ chien de mer (seadog) to the hapas of J. Hagedoorn. The achievement cannot really be overstated, IMHO. Well done, Mr.…
The slider is the best pitch in baseball.—Ted Williams
Changeup is a riff on Ray Aldridge’s brilliant beach cruising cat, Slider. I hesitated to publish these drawings at first, since they are an obvious take-off on Ray’s design, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so I hope Ray takes them in the spirit intended, which is one of respectful admiration.
Slider answers almost every single desire of my beach cruiser…
The proa designs of Australian designer J. S. Taylor have been the subject of many an interesting discussion on the proa_file list over the years. Taylor, an East European immigrant to Oz in the 50’s, had several of his provocative articles published in the yachting press of the day, both locally and internationally. Taylor was one of the first to advocate the proa as a serious yachting alternative, and his imperious tone combined with…
The boys in the lab have been working overtime on a new invention, and I wanted to give you a sneak peak. Internally we call it the spinnaclaw, however marketing is still testing the final brand name with focus groups.
As the name implies, it is a cross between a crab claw sail and a spinnaker, sort of a Scandinavian/Polynesian hybrid. The idea is to mount the crab claw boom to a spinnaker pole, and shunt the sail like a big…
Back to the Future. A collaboration with Jim Shanahan.
Tepukai are singularly amazing proas from the Santa Cruz Islands that take the usual South Pacific parsimony with building materials to the nth degree. The boats stretch out over the water’s surface like a gigantic water spider, covering the most area with the minimum mass. Tepukai employ slender, submersible wave-piercing hulls, centrally located mass for low pitching moments,…
The third (and hopefully final) iteration of Samwise the micro-cruising proa.
Some fairly dramatic changes since Samwise Part 2 (Part 1 is here). The biggest change is that Sam is now a balls out Atlantic proa - rig placed in the windward hull. No faux Pacific, “weight to windward” sham, an Atlantic proa is Sam I am.
LOA: 20’
BOA: 8’ - 12’
Windward hull beam: 2’-10”
SA: 180 sq. ft.
Mast height: 16’-2”
Rig height: 19’
Placing the…
There and back again, again.
I fleshed out a few scale drawings of Samwise last week. In keeping with the minimalist theme, I’m doing the minimum of calculations. As you can see, proportions have altered a bit - but form follows function. The goal was to make the hull sides from straight ripped ply - 2’ wide - easy as pie. The straight ply goal meant the crossbeams buried in the hulls had to go, so now they’re lashed or bolted to the…
Samwise is a minimalist cruising proa, which is really the only kind of proa there should be, IMHO. The only thing not minimal is the performance - the proa’s raison d’etre. The basic idea is reliable and cozy camp cruising in the Pacific NW - where the water is generally frigid and the air is generally tolerable.
Sam’s godfathers include Matt Layden’s Paradox and Rob Denney’s Harry, while a host of uncles include Phil Bolger, Peter…
Chris Ostlind presents a catamaran design for plywood stitch and glue construction that continues the Manu Kai theme.
Just a few months back, our Proafile host, Michael Schacht, introduced a set of concept illustrations for a very nice, 23’ Hawaiian flavored catamaran called Manu Kai.
Michael’s vision was at once elegant in the manner in which it honored traditionally styled Hawaiian sailing vessels and it provided a set of unique…
